We have had crazy April weather in Santa Barbara! Night temps were low for the longest, then we have had HOT days followed by more cool evenings and now we are back to hot. My kale and cabbages bolted. Early varieties of tomatoes have done well and corn and hot pepper plants, but few have risked planting bell peppers yet. They like warm evenings and soil.

Recent night air temps have still been in the late 40s, up to as much as 58. Soil temps in the sun are now 60 to 68. Peppers especially need warmer temps, nighttime temps above 55°F, some say 60, and soil temps above 65°F. If planted too soon, sometimes they miss their natural sequence of production, and never produce. Best Planting Temps Per Veggie!

May is generally the super month for more heat lovers, but many here haven’t planted their first rounds yet. If your area has been behaving, space permitting, do plant your second rounds this month! Start some more, different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant! The special planting treat of May is CANTALOUPES!

Start fromseeds, transplants or both! Add different varieties with different maturity dates for a steady supply, a palate pleasing assortment! Some people just remember when they planted what. Others make an ID plant tag with the plant date and name on it and the # of days to maturity. A quick glance will tell you if that set of plants is ready for another round to be planted. Or, just jot it in your calendar so you be sure to plant another round in 6 to 8 weeks.

If seeds and tending seedlings aren’t for you, transplants are fine! Eggplant, limas, all melons, all peppers, pumpkins and squash! Many wait until even June to plant tomatoes to avoid fungal problems, but if your garden is fungus free, plant away! Ideally you would wait until the soil has warmed to 70°F before sowing squash and melon seeds, but if you can’t wait, and who can?, get nursery transplants and pop them in the ground!

Some gardeners do wait until JUNE to plant southern heat lover okra. Choose faster maturing varieties for coastal SoCal. If YOU anticipate a HOT summer, plant a tad earlier, but be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.

Long beans are spectacular and love heat. Late May, June is the best time to start them. They grow quickly from seed. They will last longer than other beans, hitting their stride toward the end of summer. Certain varieties of them don’t get mildew either! Their unique flavor keeps your table interesting.

Time for heat-resistant, bolt-resistant lettuces of all kinds! Sierra, Nevada, Jericho,Black Seeded Simpson are some. Tips for super Successful Transplanting!

See last month’s chat on Tomato and Cucumber specifics, especially if your soil has Fusarium and Verticillium wilts as ours does at Pilgrim Terrace and Rancheria Community Gardens. Mainly, keep those babies’ leaves off the ground! Remove lower leaves, get them UP in a cage or trellis and lay down a loose 1″ deep straw mulch blanket. Too much straw keeps the soil moist, which is good for some plants, not for others. Under maters and cukes, we want some air circulation and a bit of soil drying. The main purpose of mulch is to keep your plant’s leaves from being water splashed or in contact with soil, which is the main way they get fungi/blight diseases.

Tomatoes! Heirlooms are particularly susceptible to the wilts, Fusarium and Verticillium. Instead, get varieties that have VFN or VF on the tag at the nursery. The V is for Verticillium, the F Fusarium wilt, N nematodes. Ace, Early Girl, Champion, Celebrity, are some that are wilt resistant/tolerant. In Santa Barbara area continued drought conditions, consider getting only indeterminates that produce all season long rather than getting determinates that need start up time every time you replant, that need water during no production periods. If you are canning, then by all means, get determinates. In the Mother Earth News tomato survey, they found gardeners chose heirlooms over hybrids if their soil is wilt/blight free. Otherwise, the longer the gardener has gardened, they more they chose wilt resistant toms if their soil has fungi. La Sumida has the largest tomato selection in the Santa Barbara area! See Special Planting and growing tips for your Tomatoes and Cucumbers!

With our warming temp trends, get bolt resistant/slow bolt varieties, and especially heat and drought tolerant varieties. Heat tolerant tomatoes and beans (Rattlesnake) keep right on producing when temps get up to and above 85.

Check out this nifty page of heat tolerant varieties at Bonnie Plant! If your plant is not heat tolerant, wait. When things cool down, it will start making flowers and setting fruit again.

Companion planting is more than saying Howdy! Certain combos enhance growth, others repel pests, some invite beneficial insects! Strengthen your garden!Plan your Companions! Keep the biodiversity rolling! Plant pest deterring plants first so they will be up and working when you put in your or seeds or transplants!

Basil is great with tomatoes, and a pack of culinary dandelions! It is thought to repel white flies, mosquitoes, tomato hornworms, aphids, houseflies, and asparagus beetles. Smells great and tastes great!

Beans, Cukes, Dill, Radish Combo! Cukes and Beans are great on the trellis, one high, one low. Dill goes with your pickling cukes. Radishes to deter Cucumber beetles.

Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile, and chamomile improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!

Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips!

Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents!

Put in ‘licious fast growers like lettuce, beets, turnips, arugula, in space being held for subsequent plantings. To use your space super productively, put these veggies on the sunny sides under any large plants. If needed, remove lower leaves that would shade out the ‘littles.’ If you anticipate unusually hot summer weather, grow the littles on the east side of larger plants to protect them from the afternoon sun.

Put in borders of slow but low growers like carrots, mini cabbages, in more permanent placements, like on what will become the morning side of taller backdrop plants like peppers and eggplant.

Watering Tips

In these drought times, water before 10:30 AM if at all possible. The earlier the better. Make your basins large enough to accommodate your plants water needs out to the dripline. Water at the base of your plant. If your plants are dusty, you are near a road or there has been a wind, give them a bath. Dusty plants are habitat for White Flies. Keep a lookout, and hose away ants.

The general rule of thumb is 1 inch per week. In very hot or windy weather, water as needed, even as much as twice a day!

Water beans, cukes,lettuces and short rooted varieties of strawberries more frequently – 2 to 3 times a week, daily in very hot or windy weather. They are all workhorses producing fast and repeatedly, cukes making a watery fruit even. Lettuces need to put on growth fast to stay sweet.

Garlic, bulb onions, and shallots naturally begin to dry this month. When the foliage begins to dry it’s time to stop watering. Dry outer layers needed for long storage will form on the bulbs. When about half of the foliage slumps to the ground, bend the rest to initiate this maturing. The bulbs will be ready for harvest when the foliage is thoroughly dry and crisp.

Please always be building compost and adding it, especially near short rooted plants and plants that like being moist. Compost increases your soil’s water holding capacity.

Pat on Mycorrhiza fungi right on the roots of all your transplants except Brassicas, when you put them in the ground. It increases uptake of nutrients, water, and phosphorus that helps roots and flowers grow and develop. Ask for it bulk at Island Seed & Feed in Goleta.

If you garden in a windy area, put up porous windbreaks to slow soil drying, and you will have less dusty conditions that bring White Flies.

Use a water device with an easy to use shut off valve.

It’s Mulch time!Compost is fine and fluffyish, intended to feed your plants, goes IN your soil. Mulch has larger pieces, and is meant to cover the surface to keep your soil cooler and moist. If it is put in the soil, larger pieces use your soil Nitrogen as they break down, depleting the Nitrogen your plants need. Straw is probably the cheapest and cleanest organic mulch. Some don’t like it that you do have to pull grasses that come up. Others don’t mind at all, they just tuck it under the mulch and it feeds the soil too! Otherwise, get good quality bags of undyed mulch.

If you are an organic gardener, it’s up to you if you choose to use City mulches. They are made from street side green waste recycle containers that can include diseased plants, non organic chemical treatment residues, toxic plastics etc.

Living mulch is when you plant an area densely enough that the leaves of the plants shade your soil and keep it moist. Lettuce does a good job. But also know that makes a moist habitat for slugs and snails, so put down some organic bait two or three times to kill off the generations. Get the store brand of Sluggo. It’s non toxic to pets and kids!

Peppers are the last plants you mulch. They like soil temps above 65. Mulch keeps the soil cooler, so use your soil thermometer to see if the mulch is cooling it too much for your peppers.

Any Brassicas – broccoli, kale – you are over summering need good deep mulch, 4 to 6 inches. They like cool soil.

Natural Disease & Pest Prevention!

Choosing excellent and appropriate plant varieties, using companion plants in wise combinations, making super soil, regularly applying prevention formulas more details and all the recipes, sidedressing and keeping up on maintenance are the things that keep your plants in top form! They will be less likely to have diseases, but pests adore tasty healthy plants just like we do, as well as them cleaning up plants that are weak or on their way out. Often when you plants are being munched, you have missed the prime harvest time. See more in the April Newsletter

The usual May culprits!

Cucumber Beetles get in cucumber, squash and melon blossoms. They aren’t picky. They are yellow greenish with black stripes or dots about the size and shape of a Ladybug. They are cute but are the very worst garden pest. They carry bacterial diseases and viruses from plant to plant, such as bacterial wilt and mosaic virus, deadly to cukes. Radish repels them, is a champion plant, a hero of the garden! Plant enough radish for you to eat and to let others just grow, be there permanently or at least until the beetles are done, gone. IPM data

Flea Beetles look like large black fleas and do hop mightily! They seem harmless enough, make tiny little holes in the leaves of eggplant, potatoes, arugula. But, those tiny holes add up. As the beetles suck out the juice of your plant they disrupt your plant’s flow of nutrients, open the leaves to disease, your plant is in a constant state of recovery, there is little production. Your plant looks dryish, lacks vitality. The trap plant for them, one that they like best, is radish! Thank goodness radish grow fast! Better yet, plant it ASAP when you put seeds and transplants in. IPM notes

Squash Bugs like your Zucchini and other squash, cucumber and melons. Plant WHITE potatoes amongst them to repel the bugs. You will get two crops instead of just one! IPM info

Whiteflies do the honeydew thing like aphids, leaving a nasty sticky black sooty mold or white fibers all over your plant’s leaves. The honeydew attracts ants, which interfere with the activities of Whitefly natural enemies. They are hard to get rid of, so keep a close watch on the undersides of leaves, especially if you see little white insects flying away when you jostle your plant. Whiteflies develop rapidly in warm weather, in many parts of California, they breed all year. Prevent dusty conditions. Keep ants out of your plants. Hose them away immediately. See more

Please plant Bee Food, Herbs and Flowers! Sow or transplant basil, borage, chervil, chamomile, chives, cilantro, comfrey, dill, fennel, lavender, marjoram, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, savory, tarragon, and thyme. Be mindful where you plant them… Mediterranean herbs from southern France, like lavender, marjoram, rosemary, sage, savory, and thyme, do well in hot summer sunand poor but well-drained soil with minimal fertilizer. On the other hand, basil, chives, coriander (cilantro), and parsley thrive in richer soil with more frequent watering. Wise planters put chives where you need to repel Bagrada Bugs, by your broccoli, kale, but away from peas if you are still growing some. Cilantro, a carrot family workhorse, discourages harmful insects such as aphids, potato beetles and spider mites, attracts beneficial insects when in bloom. Dill is a natural right next to the cucumbers since you will use the dill if you make pickles. They mature about the same time. Let some of your arugula, carrots, lettuces, cilantro bloom! Bees, and insect eating birds and beneficial insects love them and you will get some seeds – some for the birds, some for you, some to swap! Grow beauty – cosmos, marigolds, white sweet alyssum – all benefit your garden in their own way!

The first gatherings of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel like a mother about her baby – how could anything so beautiful be mine. And this emotion of wonder filled me for each vegetable as it was gathered every year. There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown.
– Alice B. Toklas

See the complete April Green Bean Connection for more great veggie gardening tips! Since we had such a cool April in Santa Barbara area, see April for more of what we can plant now in May!

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

MAY/June PlantingTimingPlant as you would in April, but in addition, now is perfect time for cantaloupes! Keep a steady table supply coming by planting second and third rounds now, seeds or transplants or both! Add different varieties with different maturity dates for a steady supply, a palate pleasing assortment! Some people just remember when they planted what. Others make an ID plant tag with the plant date and name on it and the # of days to maturity. A quick glance will tell you if that set of plants is ready for another round to be planted. Or, just jot it in your calendar so you be sure to plant another round in 6 to 8 weeks.

If seeds and tending seedlings aren’t for you, transplants are fine! Eggplant, limas, all melons, peppers, pumpkins and squash! Many wait until even June, to plant tomatoes to avoid fungal problems, but if your garden is fungus free, plant away! Ideally you would wait until the soil has warmed to 70°F before sowing squash and melon seeds, but if you can’t wait, and who can?, get nursery transplants and pop them in the ground! Some gardeners do wait until JUNE to plant southern heat lover okra. Choose faster maturing varieties for coastal SoCal. If YOU anticipate a HOT summer, plant a tad earlier, but be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.

Long beans are spectacular and love heat. Late May, though usually in June is best to start them. They grow quickly from seed. They will last longer than other beans, hitting their stride toward the end of summer. Certain varieties of them don’t get mildew either! Their unique flavor keeps your table interesting.

See last month’s chat on Tomato and Cucumber specifics, especially if your soil has Fusarium and Verticillium wilts as ours does at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Mainly, keep those babies’ leaves off the ground! Remove lower leaves, get them UP a cage or trellis and lay down a loose 1″ deep straw mulch blanket. Too much straw keeps the soil moist, which is good for some plants, not for others. Under maters and cukes, we want some air circulation and a bit of soil drying. The main purpose of mulch is to keep your plant’s leaves from being water splashed or in contact with soil, the main way they get fungi/blight diseases.

Basil is great with tomatoes, and a pack of culinary dandelions! Basil is thought to repel white flies, mosquitoes, tomato hornworms, aphids, houseflies, and asparagus beetles. Smells great and tastes great!

Put in ‘licious fast growers like lettuce, beets, turnips, arugula, in space being held for subsequent plantings. To use your space super productively, put these veggies on the sunny sides under any large plants. If needed, remove lower leaves that would shade out the ‘littles.’ If you anticipate unusually hot summer weather, grow the littles on the east side of larger plants to protect them from the afternoon sun.

Put in borders of slow but low growers like carrots, mini cabbages, in more permanent placements, like on what will become the morning side of taller backdrop plants like peppers and eggplant.

This year my summer strategy is to plant tall in the West to filter sunlight, give shorter plants respite from the hot afternoon sun, keep them a bit cooler, keep the soil a bit cooler, more moist. Last summer, record HOT, our crops produced so much, they were plum done in July. Fall planting wasn’t successful until the end of October. Hopefully my new strategy will give a longer growing period this year.

Watering Tips

Garlic, bulb onions, and shallots naturally begin to dry this month. When the foliage begins to dry it’s time to stop irrigating. Dry outer layers needed for long storage will form on the bulbs. When about half of the foliage slumps to the ground, bend the rest to initiate this maturing. The bulbs will be ready for harvest when the foliage is thoroughly dry and crisp.

In these drought times, water before 10:30 AM if at all possible. The earlier the better. Water at the base of your plant to the dripline. If your plants are dusty, you are near a road or there has been a wind, give them a bath. Dusty plants are habitat for White Flies. Keep a lookout, and hose away ants. Use a water device with a shut off valve.

Water beans, cukes, lettuces and short rooted varieties of strawberries more frequently. They are all workhorses producing fast and repeatedly, cukes making a watery fruit even. Lettuces need to put on growth fast to stay sweet.

Please always be building compost and adding it, especially near short rooted plants and plants that like being moist. Compost increases your soil’s water holding capacity.

Pat on Mycorrhiza fungi right on the roots of all your transplants except Brassicas, when you put them in the ground. It increases uptake of nutrients, water, and phosphorus that helps roots and flowers grow and develop. Ask for it bulk at Island Seed & Feed in Goleta.

If you garden in a windy area, put up porous windbreaks to slow soil drying, and you will have less dusty conditions that bring White Flies.

When your plants start to bloom, sidedress, give them a feed. Maybe a little compost, some well aged manure, a drink of tea or fish emulsion! For a deeper feed, push your spade fork in and wiggle it back and forth. Pour in your teas. Or above the holes, dig in compost, manure, worm castings. Water well and that will act like a tea! Some gardeners avoid any digging at all. They simply lay on about an inch of compost or manure, cover with thick mulch, water away! Strawberries do well with fish emulsion every couple of weeks.

Natural Disease & Pest Prevention!

Choosing excellent and appropriate plant varieties, using companion plants in wise combinations, making super soil, regularly applying prevention formulas more details and all the recipes, sidedressing and keeping up on maintenance are the things that keep your plants in top form! They will be less likely to have diseases, but pests adore tasty healthy plants just like we do, as well as them cleaning up plants that are weak or on their way out. See more in the April Newsletter

The usual May culprits!

Cucumber Beetles get in cucumber, squash and melon blossoms. They are yellow greenish with black stripes or dots about the size and shape of a Ladybug. They are cute but oh so awful. They carry bacterial diseases and viruses from plant to plant, such as bacterial wilt and mosaic virus, deadly to cukes. Radish repels them, is a champion plant, a hero of the garden! Plant enough for you to eat, let others just grow, be there permanently or at least until the beetles are done, gone. IPM data

Flea Beetles look like large black fleas and do hop mightily! They seem harmless enough, make tiny little holes in the leaves of eggplant, potatoes, arugula. But, those tiny holes add up. As the beetles suck out the juice of your plant they disrupt your plant’s flow of nutrients, open the leaves to disease, your plant is in a constant state of recovery, there is little production. Your plant looks dryish, lacks vitality. The trap plant for them, one that they like best, is radish! Thank goodness radish grow fast! Better yet, plant it ASAP when you put seeds and transplants in. IPM notes

Squash Bugs like your Zucchini and other squash, cucumber and melons. Plant white potatoes amongst them to repel the bugs. You will get two crops instead of just one! IPM info

Whiteflies do the honeydew thing like aphids, leaving a nasty sticky black sooty mold over your plant’s leaves. The honeydew attracts ants, which interfere with the activities of Whitefly natural enemies. They are hard to get rid of, so keep a close watch on the undersides of leaves, especially if you see little white insects flying away when your plant is disturbed. Whiteflies develop rapidly in warm weather, in many parts of California, they breed all year. Prevent dusty conditions. Keep ants out of your plants. Hose them away immediately. See more

Plant Bee Food, Herbs and Flowers! Sow or transplant basil, borage, chervil, chamomile, chives, cilantro, comfrey, dill, fennel, lavender, marjoram, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, savory, tarragon, and thyme. Be mindful where you plant them… Mediterranean herbs from southern France, like lavender, marjoram, rosemary, sage, savory, and thyme, do well in hot summer sunand poor but well-drained soil with minimal fertilizer. On the other hand, basil, chives, coriander (cilantro), and parsley thrive in richer soil with more frequent watering. Wise planting puts chives where you need to repel Bagrada Bugs, by your broccoli, kale, but away from peas if you are still growing some. Cilantro, a carrot family workhorse, discourages harmful insects such as aphids, potato beetles and spider mites, attracts beneficial insects when in bloom. Dill is a natural right next to the cucumbers since you will use the dill if you make pickles. They mature about the same time. Let some of your arugula, carrots, lettuces, cilantro bloom! Bees, and insect eating birds and beneficial insects love them and you will get some seeds – some for the birds, some for you, some to swap! Grow beauty – cosmos, marigolds, white sweet alyssum – all benefit your garden in their own way!

The first gatherings of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel like a mother about her baby – how could anything so beautiful be mine. And this emotion of wonder filled me for each vegetable as it was gathered every year. There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown.
– Alice B. Toklas

See the complete May Green Bean Connection for more great veggie gardening tips!

April brought a LOT of wonderful flowers and veggies to Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden in Santa Barbara! See what we are planting, get some great ideas!

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. We are very coastal, during late spring/summer in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!